Marco Pierre White: Knorr Is Best

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Endorsement deals can be lucrative for chefs. What are the tricks to getting one? You can say something nice about the product to get noticed by the producer. You need to pick the right product so you are not diluting your future brand potential. You should be important enough that consumers will listen to you and take your advice. It helps if the company also has other products to endorse so that your relationship with the company can extend to different products. Look at a recent example of a celebrity chef winning interest from a company. Marco Pierre White said something nice about Knorr bouillon chicken cubes. Well, more than something nice. He called Knorr's "the best ingredient in the world," in a far-ranging interview published in Caterer and Housekeeper Magazine and commented on in the British Press. Consumers evidently listen to Marco because, according to the UK's Lifestyle Extra, "Knorr cubes have been flying off the shelves nationwide since White's remark, and supermarket chain Asda reported a surge in sales across the country of an average of 27%." That got Knorr's attention, and they are already in talks with Marco's people (his agent). (Knorr products in Europe are not the same as the US. There are plenty of bouillon cubes like Bouquet Garni, Court Bouillon and Jus de Veau that are usually not on sale in American stores.) Looking more closely at his interview reveals a whole range of ingredients Marco could potentially endorse: I buy into simplicity. Knorr is the best f***ing ingredient in the world, let's not kid ourselves. Knorr chicken cubes? Genius product. Every kitchen should have a packet. The problem is most people don't know how to use it. It's like ketchup: it's a great sauce. Colman's, Worcester sauce, they've all got their places. It's what you do with them. The Box Tree did a sauce with Worcester sauce that was the most delicious sauce in the world to serve with beef. And the Box Tree had two stars. (Both Knorr and Coleman's Mustard are manufactured by Unilever. Lea and Perrin's Worchestshire Sauce is now owned by Groupe Danone.) Why is Marco so important? If TV is the current measure of importance, then please note that this summer he takes over the host job for the third season of Hell's Kitchen, originated by his former chef de cuisine, Gordon Ramsay. He has also initiated legal proceedings against Gordon after Gordon admitted in an interview with Bill Buford in The New Yorker that in 1998 he had stolen his own reservation book from his restaurant Aubergine and then blamed Marco for it so that Aubergine's investors would stop courting Marco. Marco wrote extensively about the same incident in his autobiography, The Devil in the Kitchen (see review). Like Ramsay, Marco has an autobiography, cookbooks, multiple restaurants, and language full of expletives (he taught Gordo to do the same). But expletives don't seems to turn off consumers or companies and Marco's endorsement power, though in the Caterer article he says: Gordon did it his way; I'll do it my way. We all have different ways of expressing ourselves. I want my emphasis to be on the food and the kitchens rather than the swearing. Maybe the trick is cleaning up your mouth -- just not too much. Previous articles: Marco Pierre White: The Devil in the Kitchen Are British Super Chefs Richer? Gordon Ramsay: Women Can't Cook Hell's Kitchen a la Apprentice: You're Fired! Hell's Kitchen on ICE Sneak Peak: Hell's Kitchen, with Gordon Ramsay Gordon Ramsay Joins Richard Branson in Fox's Reality TV Hell [Chefs & Branding - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging --> back to Super Chef